It EXISTS!!

It exists. I surely DOES exist!! I know this for a fact. Though I've never seen it. You would not have seen it too but I'm sure you, too, will agree with me that it exists!

No. I'm not talking about Him. (Or Her, for that matter). Not God. Or Goddess. Or, if you're a Hindoo... not God, Goddess, not "god" (or "goddess) with the lower case either. 

I have felt it. Hundreds of times. In fact, I'm writing this because I felt it just now... am feeling it NOW, in fact. And that's how it usually is. Manifests itself suddenly, quite often without any reason. In the most sudden manner, often at the most inconvenient times.... GRRR. And in the most inconvenient manner. 

The only thing to do, really, is to ignore it. Which, by the way, is easy to say - not do. So, even as I'm writing this, concentrating my mind on this next word, this next letter, or comma etc, stubbornly focused on actively ignoring it, I'm actually not. Ignoring, I mean. 

It is there. Very much THERE. Not just on my mind. Not in my sub-conscious. Or id. or whatever. It exists. Somewhere behind me. Just beyond arm's reach. And it is not staying put in one place. NOW it is "there" and, in a jiffy, it is now in another "there". Shifty. Shifting. Just as I try to reach for it. 

There's no point, really.. the damn thing is like "Phantom" from those comics. "Faster than the eye can see", which actually doesn't make any sense, you know, because, duh, well, you can't see it in the first place. 

See my face? I'm getting irritated now. Well and TRULY irritated. Where the hell is it?!! I'm reaching for it. THERE! Got it, just barely! F#*K, it's MOVED again. Where's the pen? Or pencil? You think I should use something else, a bit longer maybe? Aah! Got IT, NOW!

An ITCH! There!! Nailed it!!! What bliss, to be able to pin this down and scratch, scratch, SCRATCH, S-C-R-A-TCH!! Sheer relief :) What the hell???!! It's shifted again, somewhere lower, once again beyond reach........ GRRRRRRRRRRR. 

I tell you, guys, an ITCH can truly be a B*^%CH!!

GRIEF - Pure & Simple

There are some times when an image gets burned into the brain - an image that may be incongruous, or perfectly ordinary but still, like being branded with a searing hot iron, gets burned deep. And will stay there. Till the end of memory.

I remember, January 1989 - walking in to my house in Madras after an all day and an all night trip from Nasik to Bombay to Madras. My younger brother and I - and there he was, my father. Stretched out on a slab of ice. Ears and nose stuffed with cotton. 

Dead. What a word!! As cold and unfeeling as that slab of ice on which he lay. His face seemed "normal", as if he was asleep. We had been trying to come to grips with this for close on 24 hours, ever since we got word of his last, final attack. And yet....

Somewhere within me, I had this feeling that he would open his eyes and give us that special, goofy smile that belonged solely to him. Never happened. I was 25 when he died. Old enough to come to terms with the altered reality. That was almost 25 years back - a lifetime ago.

Today, another funeral, another set of images, also burned into the recesses of my mind. A neighbour, after a prolonged bout with cancer, passed away - she was, perhaps, in her mid forties - leaving behind a husband and two young boys. The husband, a man I've held in very high regard during the years of having come to know him well, was stoic and seemingly in control. (As was to be expected, perhaps - guilty of regional stereotyping, surely, but we Nairs/Malayalis are, typically, undemonstrative) 

The children, aged around 13 and 8 perhaps, seemed rather unmoved by the occasion, I thought - perhaps they had become acclimatised to the idea, having seen the mother struggle through pain for close on a year. Till almost to the very end, both boys seemed to have "adjusted" - at least that was what I thought, and I admired them both for their strength and fortitude. 

It was at the end, just as the body was placed on the electric crematorium's sliding rails - the elder boy perhaps realised only then that this was the point of no return. The look of pure desolation, the horror of that moment, those urgent steps that led him out from the crowd into his own lonely corner where he felt the need to be just then... 

Grief, pure & simple, is so difficult to share. It must be shouldered, all alone. He did not cry, he just shivered, trembled and gazed vacantly into a middle distance.  

Me? Mumbaikar??!!

I've been a resident of this, amchi Mumbai since around the end of 2002, so I've dedicated a decade of my existence to this "Maximum City", "land of Bollywood dreams", "financial capital", "Metro City No 1" or whatever other names we denizens may choose to call this by, fondly or otherwise.

In all these years, my preferred mode of toodling around this benighted (and betrayed - by its leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, administrators, whoever) town has been, mostly, by my very own car. A humble Maruti 800, to begin with, imported from blissful Goa during my early days in Mumbai. That wonderful, trusty car has, since, gone back to Goa and, last seen, was still tooling along, unhurriedly in the wide open spaces there. In the years intervening I've gone through a couple of cars more and, perhaps, ought to begin the search for my next chariot sometime soon. But that is another story.

Unlike most Mumbaikars who depend on the famed "locals" of Mumbai, honestly, in these many years since 2002 I would have perhaps traveled by/on them not more than a dozen times. Including one memorable journey, circa 2003, when I tried (momentarily successfully) to impersonate Rajnikanth, hanging from the foot board of the local from Andheri to Bandra (en route to Mahalaxmi). 

               

Empirical evidence does, indeed, prove that it IS possible for the average Mumbaikar to stand - quite comfortably - on the foot board of the average local train (back in Chennai where I hail from these trains are called, quaintly, EMUs, by the way), with just a mere 7 square inches of foot space and the last phalange of just three fingers of one hand. I confess, I am not the average Mumbaikar. I am alive, this day, and typing this (with the last phalange of two fingers, one from each hand, by the way) solely and exclusively because a group of average Mumbaikars who shared that sever square inches (each) alongside me, on realising my plight, promoted me to "Uncle" and, in that spirit of generosity for which Mumbai has been acclaimed, pushed me deeper into the confines of the coach and to safety.

Anyway, the point is, in the 11 years that I've been here, I've probably traveled on the local trains perhaps 12 times. Venkatesh Prasad has a better batting average than this? And, recently, last month, I'd been to that other city that pretends to be a rival to Mumbai. New Delhi. 

 

     

Capital city. Big. Broad. Brawny. Brash. Boorish. 

Was there for one night, two days. And I traveled. From Gurgaon to Connaught Place (Rajiv Chowk, oops!). From Rajiv Chowk to Dwarka Sector 347 (or whatever). Back to back - two evenings. By public transport. Like any average Delhiwalla. (Is there an "average" Delhiwalla? They're all outstanding chappies!) On their famed Delhi Metro (OK, OK, I know, the Bongs and the bhadralok had it first, in Calcutta). 

And I came away IMPRESSED. No sarcasm here. Not an iota of it! What an experience?!! I was simply blown!! 

I was like John Keats "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer"...I felt like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken.... and I gazed and gazed and I wondered...

If Dilli can do it, what the eff is wrong with Mumbai? WHY oh WHY can this not be done here?? 

The comfort! The space! The frequency! The fabulous network crisscrossing NCR from Gurgaon to NOIDA and all across! The sheer affordability! The cleanliness. The discipline!! The speed! The crystal clear information announcements (next station, which side the platform would come, everything!!)

     

Do we really NEED to wait for a new Mumbai Metro Rail to be inaugurated (God knows when?) in order to enable human beings travel as human beings? Why is it not possible to make over the existing network, the existing rails and coaches?   

Honest to goodness, if Mumbai can go and get itself a rail service that can match Delhi/Kolkata, I sell my car! I travel by train. I become an average Mumbaikar. 

Until that day..... who? Me? Mumbaikar?!!!